Blogger's comment function is temporarily down for me at least, so I'm putting this response to another comment in a standalone post, just to get it out for now. Will probably delete this post later when the comment can be put in the comments section as it's supposed to.
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Minecraft offers re-skins, but you can't change the proportions. You can't make a lardass, an emaciated anorexic, someone with short stubby legs but looong torso, narrow shoulders and wide waist, etc.
And because the resolution is so low and pixelated, it's hard to give the facial features a warped and unnatural proportion / arrangement.
Minecraft skins amount to playing dress-up with clothing, not making them look like freaks of nature.
As for buggy launches of American video games, that goes for everything these days.
English-language streamers are famous for "EN scuff" or the "EN curse" -- delaying / canceling streams, game not installed at all or improperly while already going live, audio problems, etc. Some of it is on the streamer, some of it is on the Western ISP.
That's not really cult of ugliness, more like negligence -- same for those buggy initial releases of video games. That's not deliberately to make it unpleasant for the audience, but part of negligence and lack of caring about what they do, so things fall into disrepair, instead of being deliberately made to be ugly or weird.
Does '80s icon The Legend of Zelda have the most '70s aesthetics? Yesterday I somehow had a premonition of Korone being in the Moominator's 3D showcase later that night, so instead of the usual Okayu retro stream, I finally got around to watching Doog's recent Legend of Zelda stream, before Moom's big night.
ReplyDeleteHoly earth tones! I guess I haven't played it in awhile, so it was shocking to see the color palette, especially after the '80s revival of the late 2000s and 2010s, when only the neon and pastel side of the '80s were portrayed, in particular the red / pink and blue extremes.
And Legend of Zelda is not from 1980 or '81, when '70s colors were still very in. It's from '86, well into neon pink + blue Club Babylon from Scarface territory.
In case you ojisans need a refresher, or you Millennials and Zoomers haven't seen it before, start with the 15th pic (exploring the desert), since the first dozen or so are crappy quality.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/3393/the-legend-of-zelda/screenshots/nes/
The background is a warm beige -- with yellow / orange and brown tones to it. It's supposed to be the ground or earth without grass etc. growing on top of it, so in true Edenic fashion, it has to have a warm yellow or orange, along with brown, to give it as vibrant of a color as the ground can get without having grass growing on top of it.
The sand in the desert has a two-tone combo with the beige background and dark orange-y brown speckling, exactly like the ubiquitous Japanese ceramic mugs from the '70s. The two-tone is echoed in the dark orange / brown mountains around the perimeter.
Elsewhere these rocky formations are a rich organic green, as in the game's starting location or outside of Level 2.
In forested areas, there are obviously forest-green trees, but autumnal brown ones as well.
The palaces or trees that house the Levels come in the same colors.
There's hardly any blue / purple or red / pink to be seen in the environment or archicture -- or gray, for that matter, outside of the graveyard.
Really the only large amounts of blue are in the water bodies, as they should be in nature.
Several enemies do come in a vibrant jewel-tone blue and red pair, but more common is one of the pair being various shades of yellow and orange and cream (and maybe burnt siena details, not ruby red). Usually the other one is blue, but for the moblins the other one is two-toned seaweed green and avocado green.
Level 3's background is avocado green, and both Levels 4 and 6 are between mustard yellow and dried-mud-brick brown.
How did this distilled essence of '70s earthiness make its way into such an iconic game of the decade of neon / pastel / complimentary colors?
ReplyDeleteI think it's the Edenic setting and mood -- Eden is a place that's natural, organic, and soothing, with some degree of stimulation of course, but not super high-contrast and seizure-inducing, and not from unnatural sources.
I'm not complaining. I've always loved '70s colors more than '80s ones -- notwithstanding the color palette of this blog that I introduced in 2013 during the height of the neon '80s revival -- since that's what I grew up with (parents married in the late '70s, was never not around the earthy / boho-for-the-masses look and highly textured feel of the '70s).
All throughout the recent golden age of thrifting (the 2010s), I was getting more '70s than '80s stuff, even though the latter was way more popular at that time.
And now that the '90s / y2k is in a revival, I've got some green + purple items (the iconic color combo of that era), although nothing yet in a heavy cranberry red, although I have seen some vintage Woolrich and Pendleton shirts from back then with that shade of red. A bridge too far for me.
Otherwise the '90s were very earth tones-y as well, so if you have '70s stuff, it reads as a '90s trend as well (the revival of the '70s during the '90s).
I still remember a staple item of mine back in the alterna heyday of '94 or '95 being an avocado or sage green grandpa wool cardigan that I scored from a thrift store (way ahead of the times), and cut holes for my thumbs into the cuffs, to give it that grunge-y edge. Chicks liked it, too -- '90s chicks did, anyway, but I'm sure the '90s revivalist Zoomer cuties of today would dig it as well. ^_^
Speaking of '90s colors, Mumei has the most '90s palette in her costumes. Her default has the signature color of the decade -- teal green -- as well as multiple shades of brown, and even cranberry red on her skirt. Her kimono outfit also has a cranberry red vest, and a brown beret.
ReplyDeleteThe only '90s color she's missing is purple -- maybe that could be worked into an alternate maxi-skirt for her casual outfit. Still plaid with the same pattern, but with purple and green among the colors, rather than only browns and grays.
Or if she's feeling like a little dramatic flair -- a tam o' shanter with green and purple among the colors. Hehe. Not too crazy -- nothing that would go against her humble girl-next-door appeal. Just a little something snazzy and jazzy for when she's feeling extra extraverted.
And yes, Moom -- you ARE an extravert! Things have gotten confused by social interactions taking place online, as opposed to face-to-face IRL. But you obviously get, and crave, social attention via online platforms. Not just streaming to an audience, but messaging your fellow Holo honies back-and-forth -- sometimes in full view of the public, you little exhibitionist. ^_^
Anyone who has ADHD is automatically an extravert. Introverts can live inside their own mind because they don't get so easily distracted by external stimuli -- their own internal level of stimulation is already high. If anything, external stimuli *over*-stimulates them, so they would rather be alone -- online, as well as offline.
There can be introvert streamers -- Kronii is a clear example -- but there's nothing to prevent an extravert from seeking social stimulation through online channels. You, Irys, Kiara above all others, are ample proof of that.
A person does not collect a harem of foreign babes (you in Japan) without being extraverted. :)
I forgot Legend of Zelda has a gambling feature, and knew it would be bad news for an Asian player. Sure enough, Korone couldn't resist, and gambled herself into ruin, and later on resorted to save-scumming the gambling in order to quickly get enough for the blue ring.
ReplyDeleteImmediately thought of Irys in Rust, too, hehe.
Or the whole gacha phenomenon...
Asians can't resist trying to influence their luck until they ruin their savings.
Maybe their love of gambling is to confine and quarantine this vice of theirs, to where it can be ritualized and indulged in -- for a little bit, and then it's safely back to the normal world, where they will be dutiful savers and dependable workers.
Visit the casino, or the pachinko parlor, and that's enough. Back to real life after that.
But with the invasion of these gambling channels into their everyday mundane spaces, through online connections, instead of clearly delineated red light districts, it could undercut the "once in awhile" aspect of it, and make it part of their everyday routine, and truly ruin their savings.
When I become dictator of the world, all forms of online payments will be ended. If you want to buy something, you have to leave your house, go to the point of sale, hand over physical currency, and receive the good or service right then and there.
It's too easy for people to waste their entire life savings -- and rack up insane debt on top of that -- from the privacy and anonymity of your own home.
As a sign of unity, I will dismantle one such source that *everybody* hates, looks down their nose at, and would rejoice if it were destroyed -- home shopping channels, beginning with QVC. Every demo other than 50-something suburban libtard women with a bit too much income (though not being rich), would point and laugh at its destruction. An easy first target, to warm the fires.
The gambling in Super Mario 2 ("Mario USA") is not actually gambling, now that I think about Okayu's stream of that game. She was definitely getting excited at playing a slot machine, and she even figured out some trick to make it partly a game of skill rather than pure luck and chance. She got a cherry on the first roll pretty frequently.
ReplyDeleteBut even if she never won a single 1UP, it wouldn't be gambler's ruin -- because the "coins" you use to play the slot machine at the end of the level have no value whatsoever outside of the slot machine. You can't buy anything else with them, at any point in the game, you don't get to screenshot your savings and have them redeemed online for real money, or anything like that.
So in effect they are like poker chips -- not ones that you exchange for real currency before and after the game, but just the chips themselves. Like when kids play poker and use only the chips, not exchanging them for anything valuable. Or monopoly money.
This is a much better way to work gambling into video games -- gambling junkies get to feel the rush of trying to influence their luck in a game of chance, but if they exhaust their tokens, it's not ruin, because the tokens have no value outside of the gambling game itself.
Whereas in Legend of Zelda, when you blow all your rupees on gambling, you can no longer buy that shield you needed after it got eaten by a like-like, you can't buy the medicine you need to refill your nearly depleted life meter, etc.
That's not real money from the real world, but they are alternative and valuable uses that the in-game money can be exchanged for. So it does simulate real-world gambling.
When I become dictator of the world, gambling will only be done with worthless tokens, not something with value outside of the game itself.
Fuwamoco evangelizing for physical media over streaming data, on last night's stream -- a very old and familiar topic here. :)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of having to go out of the house to buy things, instead of paying online...
Thrift stores and second-hand media stores are still chock full of CDs and DVDs, BTW. I think they're down to $1 at Goodwill these days. Used DVDs used to cost $8 in the 2010s! And CDs about $5.
Records are rare and expensive -- because they are merch for fans to compete over in a fake & gay status contest. Those people don't ever play their records, and may even prefer fACtOrY-SeAlED records. The giveaway is the term "vinyl" -- which Fuwamoco, to their coolness credit, never used, and only used the term "records".
Records are the media you play, vinyl is the merch you collect.
"Girl, put your vinyl on" -- yeah, I don't think so. You don't play around with the valuable merch.
Between this evangelizing for physical media, and streaming N64 games using a home console (with capture card), I've got them pegged as corporeal rather than cerebral types. Very rare in the online content creator world.
If they were guys, we'd say they're jocks rather than nerds. What's the girl counterpart of a jock? They're cheerleaders rather than nerds? Something like that. ^_^
They do like singing and dancing, leading a pep rally for their audience, chants, call-and-response... yes, they're virtual cheerleaders! Cheerleaders for unironic weebery. Suteishis. ^_^
And not to lewd them or anything, just a purely analytical observation, that also means they are likely butt girls rather than boob girls, notwithstanding the design of Fuwawa's model.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, I'm starting to change my view and think Moom is more of a boob girl than butt girl. (Again, just an observation of what traits are correlated with which other traits.)
She didn't show her butt during the 3D showcase, but did showcase the girls. She outright claimed on-stream before that "I don't have a butt" (could've been deflection, but could've been blunt honesty to defuse the butt-men from getting their hopes up).
But more than anything, it was a spontaneous comment she made, after she and the audience were getting a little too close and friendly. She quickly said, "I need you to be mean to me," giggled nervously, and then switched topics to something else.
That's a very boob-girl thing to say.
And she's bringing out more of her emo teenage side -- emo / scene girls were almost entirely boob girls.
Butt girls are less likely to go through a depressive or anti-social / angsty phase. If they do, it takes on a more corporeal edge, like being into industrial music in the '90s, and... well, something similar in the 2000s or 2010s, idk what specifically. But not emo or scene. Something more dance-y and techno-y, just with a dark edge to it.
I'm still convinced the owl hourglass hips are real, given what she's said about her knee pain and posture.
But, fellow butt-men, we may have to retire the meme of "moombutt"...
::"Taps" plays on an owl-girl's bgm::
Also, nice to hear Anna Khachiyan referring to Assyria, Babylonia, Sumeria, and Mesopotamia on Red Scare last week. ^_^
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of cerebral boob girls who need a little meanness to prevent too much intimacy...
That's why you guys read this blog -- all sorts of topics, none of which are from the sad and tired, fake & gay "discourse" over on Twitter.
That's my job -- to operate a discursive safe space. Not in the sense of an underground, samizdat, hideout. That hope of the internet died out during the Trump years.
Rather, in the sense of a resort or retreat, where you can just get away from it all -- the fakeness, the gayness, all of it.
Very refreshing air when the location is above it all. ^_^
Japan's super-bouncy dance-y take on the early '60s revival, during the mid-'70s, "Rouge no Dengon" by Yumi Matsutoya (1975):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9lYzWkz8Zs
In the same vein as Grease, Happy Days, etc. in the West -- getting over the counter-cultural strife of the late '60s and early '70s, looking back to the more happy-go-lucky times of the early '60s. In the case of "December 1963 (Oh What a Night)" it was by one of the original oldies groups, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons.
This yearning for the pre-late-'60s lasted up through the Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks era of David Lynch's work, The Sandlot, and later on, Mad Men.
If David Lynch were Japanese, you can totally imagine him using "Rouge no Dengon" to set the tone of quirky yet Everyman characters enjoying some sincere nostalgia -- not an ironic lolsorandum xD meme song for self-imposed outcasts.
As it happens, it was used as the theme song for the anime movie Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) by Studio Ghibli.
I just KNEW I'd heard it recently! While doing my Ghibli reps over the summer. Also Irys sang it during the same time, at 54:00 below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZlslLuBlOc
So much Ghibli synchronicity over the summer!
I went down this rabbit hole because Flare sang it in her karaoke today, and it sounded so familiar. It's too catchy to forget!
ReplyDeleteSo I looked up who else in Hololive sang this song, and it's only Irys on the EN side, while lots of talents have sung it on the JP side -- Akirose, Fubuki, Shion, Mio, Okayu, Korone, Flare, Noel, Marine (many many times), Towa, Luna, Polka, Laplus, and Chloe. And there may be others who I could not easily discover!
This is yet another example of the cultural chasm between Japanese people of all backgrounds, and anime-oriented weebs. And this song was even used as the main theme for a Ghibli movie!
Maybe this is already known and detailed and discussed better in the weebosphere, but I'm just starting to realize how wide this divide is. Of course, there are some exceptions among weebs, who are really what we'd call "Japanophiles" in the context of another culture. But they seem to be the minority among Westerners who make "watching anime" part of their sub-cultural identity.
The majority of "anime-watchers" are not Japanophiles -- they either don't care about the rest of Japanese culture, or laugh and look down their nose at it. They're only into supposedly edgy Japanese culture, not the normie Japanese stuff. Meanwhile every Holo JP girl, whether edgy or not, enjoys bouncing along to "Rouge no Dengon" and watching Kiki's Delivery Service (whose characters are quirky, not edgy).
On a hunch, I looked up who has sung "Kimi wo Nosete", the theme song from Castle in the Sky, probably my favorite Ghibli movie (along with Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind), and it's the same pattern. Lots of Holo JP girls -- and only Irys among EN. She truly is part-American and part-Japanese, culturally.
And again, that's not some random Jpop song -- it's the theme for an anime movie. But anime-watchers in the West shrug their shoulders at the movie and the song.
I already covered how anime-watchers don't play Japanese video games, only Western games (see toward the end of the comments section of the previous post).
ReplyDeletePerhaps that's part of their edgy counter-cultural branding -- every normie in the West loves Street Fighter, Zelda, Castlevania, Mario, Kirby, Sonic, Donkey Kong, etc., so liking those things cannot possibly help their edgy branding. It can only be some edgy / deliberately kusoge / irony-poisoned Japanese game, like those by Chilla's Art.
I remember not too long ago, maybe the 2000s, the Japanophiles who were into anime and video games made it part of their identity to like the mainstream anime and games, but also the more obscure / deep cuts / only released in Japan / untranslated ones.
It was like that in the '90s as well, back when the medium was still called "Japanimation" instead of "anime".
Sometime during the counter-cultural crusades of the 2010s, anime-watchers and vidya-players tossed all of the great popular anime and games into the garbage dump, whether it was Western or Japanese. Part of the cult of ugliness and cursedness.
Part of imperial collapse.
Part of rationalizing and glorifying the stagnation of our culture -- hard to cope with cultural stagnation and decline, when there are so many reminders of how great the culture used to be within living memory. Better memory-hole all of those inconvenient reminders. The cognitive dissonance of experiencing those older works of culture, and the current and ongoing collapse of the culture, is too great for weak psyches to withstand.
The other form of coping is the RETVRN or escapist solution, which is superior because it does not erase and desecrate everything wonderful that came before The Fall.
Both are forms of coping, neither form will contribute wonderful new works to the culture, but one is morally wrong and the other is morally right. Simple as that.
When I become dictator of the world, I will restore all of the memory-holed culture, once dear to both edgy and normie audiences alike.
I'm sure the Japanophile cheerleaders, Fuwamoco, will sing this classic song at some point. They've already done so many JP oldies and anime songs, including "Sanpo" from My Neighbor Totoro by Ghibli.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the classic JP games -- already several streams into Donkey Kong Country and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
They're almost trolling the ironic weebs at this point -- they pick a FromSoftware game to play, and it's not Elden Ring, it's not Dark Souls, it's not Armored Core, it's... a colorful puzzle platformer with kawaii characters, with the cutesy name of The Adventures of Cookie and Cream. ^_^
How long until a cute-'em-up game? If they already like kawaii witch characters, there were several like that (in the Cotton series).
Or Fantasy Zone, with its pastel '80s palette and kawaii designs. Hehe. Matches their own models' palette, aqua and pink (also popular during the 2010s, as part of the '80s revival).
They're not only protecting our smile from everyday bad vibes, they're protecting the uplifting culture of the past from the memory-holing crusade of the cult of ugliness.
And without being stern or aggressive shield maidens in the culture war -- more like giggly cheerleaders or choir singers, lifting spirits through pep rallies and recitals. Disarmingly and dangerously cute! ^_^
Blizzard made two awesome colorful & kawaii puzzle platformers, back in the '90s, largely forgotten after they made Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, etc.
ReplyDeleteLost Vikings, and Lost Vikings 2. Some screenshots:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1547/the-lost-vikings/screenshots/dos/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/3215/norse-by-norse-west-the-return-of-the-lost-vikings/screenshots/snes/
You play as a party of 3 characters with different mixes of traits -- some can do offense but no defense, some can jump while others can't, etc. You navigate the environment, booby traps, and enemies, to get from the start to the end of a stage. Several stages per world.
The mix of skills means you have to strategize which character to use, in which place, in which order. There is an action / timing element as well, not just like moving static chess pieces around the board.
Some of the best puzzle games ever, certainly the best puzzle platformers (yes, better than Lemmings or Krusty's Super Fun House).
Both now available in a Switch collection of Blizzard's deep cuts, for only $20 (with another platformer, and 2 racing games):
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/blizzard-arcade-collection-switch/
Easily worth the price. I already have Lost Vikings for Super Nintendo, although the sequel is a late release and rare / expensive, so I only played it on a rom during the golden age of file-sharing. If you want a legit and cheap way to play it, the Switch collection is it.
As I recall, the sequel is better, and you could probably start with that one. They don't build on each other. If you play the first one, the first world (spaceship) is a bit boring, so only useful for tutorial purposes. The worlds after that are the cool-looking ones, including the iconic purple + green '90s combo. ^_^
Passwords allow you to skip to any level.
Totally worth it!
I would recommend the Lost Vikings games to Fuwamoco -- in the vein of playing Cookie & Cream instead of a Souls-like game, playing a Lost Vikings game instead of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut, I don't know if they lurk here, or if they'd find a game recommendation presumptuous / back-seating / etc.
So I'll recommend them instead to the general audience of gamers, if you want some high-quality deep cuts from a super-popular creator. Lost Vikings, and especially the sequel!
The sequel adds some new characters with new skills, who cycle in and out between stages, still giving you 3 characters within each stage. And the graphics have more detail.
The level designs are great in each, with plenty of vertical as well as horizontal scrolling. I think only the early spaceship stages in the first game are on the simplistic horizontal side. Otherwise, lots of spaces to explore, and memorable environments!
Plus, what other game do you play as kawaii Vikings, instead of chuuni Vikings? ^_^
If you do get a physical copy of LV2, only the Super Nintendo one is worth it (avoid the PS1, etc.). The other releases use a 3D or 2.5D style, and just like today's pseudo-2D platformers, the lighting is too dark, the colors are bland and desaturated, and the shapes are too polygonal / CGI rather than looking like hand-drawn illustration.
ReplyDeleteis Miyazaki any good - some people have recommended to me
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen every movie he's directed, but you definitely have to see Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Castle in the Sky, from the '80s, and Princess Mononoke from the late '90s.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a hot take -- or a cold take by now, I don't know anything about anime discourse -- but I think Spirited Away is one of his weaker movies, despite being the most hyped. It doesn't have the heroic adventures through an exciting vast landscape (almost entirely takes place in a single, uncanny building). No quirky or magical characters who turn the lives of ordinary people upside-down (the protag has her life turned upside-down, in an unsettling and uncanny way, with characters who behave normally while doing bizarre activities). And the color palette reflects that -- none of the lush colors that you think of as "the Ghibli landscape".
It's similar to those dark children's movies of the second half of the '80s in America, but it doesn't commit to the darkness and the heroic fight against it. It's more about the protag's adaptation and coping and getting used to a nightmarish other-world, but whose look-and-feel and whose characters don't behave in a distinctly nightmarish way. Their normal behavior is normalizing the weirdo-world that she's been sucked into against her will, where her parents have been taken away and turned into wild hogs, with an evil stepmother / headmistress type overseeing her imprisonment.
If the goal is to make the audience feel what a child feels who has been kidnapped, orphaned, and impressed into child labor, gradually and helplessly going into Stockholm Syndrome -- then it does a good job. But aesthetically, it is an unsettling and uncomfortable experience, unlike Labyrinth, Return to Oz, and all those other dark kids' movies from the '80s in America.
And while I wouldn't say Spirited Away is part of the cult of ugliness, it does rely mainly on the caricatured, grotesque, and disgusting look of the characters in order to unsettle the viewer.
ReplyDeleteThis just makes us feel disgust, though -- which is not the same emotion as fear. Literal disgust at the stench demon, queasy at the eerie unreality of the atmosphere -- but we don't feel fear.
There's no real mortal threat to the protag or her parents, no enemies chasing after her, no treacherous landscapes to navigate, no impending sense of doom (like a "countdown until you lose everything"). Nothing that would make our heart-rate race, our blood pressure rise, our pores sweat, our eyes open wide, and our lungs gasp for air.
It's all disgust-related, not fear-related.
And to vicariously experience a small child slip into Stockholm Syndrome, adapting to a disgusting and eerie / queasy atmosphere, is almost worse than experiencing them adapting to something fear-related, like getting beaten up by their parents / school bully / evil villain. Adapting to things, people, and places that are eerie and disgusting is humiliating, debasing, and corrupting. It's trying to spoil the innocence and purity of a person in the most vile, material way.
In the dark kids movies from America in the '80s, or Alice in Wonderland, there is also an eerie atmosphere -- but there are also things that are violent threats, impending doom, and other sources of danger. There's no danger in Spirited Away -- no sense of confronting the Sublime, and surviving it. It's about adapting to disgusting corrupting things until you find the right opportunity to slip free from their grubby clutches.
And in those superior dark kids' movies, there is also tons of comic relief -- not only to balance the tone of danger and fear, but to add to the sense of it being a bizarre other-world, where characters look, say, and behave in strange ways -- so strange that it strikes us, from ordinary-world, as comical (even if the characters themselves play it straight-faced).
None of his other movies, or other Studio Ghibli movies, suffer from this pervasive tone of uncomfortable, creepy debasement of innocent children. And none of them look so dull -- although it's well-drawn and animated, relatively speaking Spirited Away is far less visually fascinating than the others. I really don't understand why it is so hyped, at least in the West, compared to the others.
I think it's hyped more for the historical role it played in the mainstreaming of Japanese anime in the West. I remember the buzz surrounding it when it was originally released, and one of my close girl friends in college was so excited after seeing it that she convinced the rest of us to see it too. (No, she was not an otaku or anything like that -- part of the pretty, preppy, popular crowd in her high school, I'm sure. That's how mainstream anime was becoming by the early 2000s.)
But aesthetically speaking, you're far better off introducing yourself to Miyazaki and/or Ghibli with Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, or Arrietty.
Grave of the Fireflies (a non-Miyazaki Ghibli movie) does a superior job of using pathos to tell the story of innocent children who must deal with bad circumstances, and who gradually suffer more and more throughout the narrative.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the threats they face are mainly violence / danger (air raids during WWII), hostile other characters (having to rely on more distant and coldhearted relatives, after the nuclear family has been ended by the war), and poverty and famine (also due to the war).
None of these forces are related to disgust, to the grotesque.
They do eventually lead the main characters into a more disgusting and pathetic state of being, but the forces themselves are not fundamentally about disgust.
And all the while, the main characters try their hardest to overcome these obstacles, rather than accept them and adapt to a disgusting and corrupting environment.
Struggling to survive against dangers is more dignified than coping with disgusting and corrupting surroundings. And the ultimate fate of the main characters is grim, unlike in Spirited Away. And yet, the audience does not vicariously experience corruption and debasement, albeit breaking free from it in the end.
A world that is cold, harsh, and dangerous is not as debasing as one that is creepy, grotesque, and disgusting. In the former world, our purity and sense of what is normal and natural, as people, is not under attack.
The latter world needs to have more danger than disgust, and to have lots of comic relief, in order to succeed as a narrative. Otherwise it's just a purity-contaminating simulator, an aesthetic and moral offense.
High school laptop on the counter
ReplyDeleteYour cheeks were turning red
Fan-girling over One-D
In your tumblr threads
And your mother's sharing screenshots
Of your edgelord OC's
You chat about always moving
Thinking your home was /vt/
And we know you've logged off
And there's no more vods left to view
And we hide your folders long enough
To hide why we needed to
'Cause there we are again, guerrilla watch-me-draw night
We're bantzing 'bout perfursons, at unmedicated heights
"Buy the chair," we were /there/
We remember it, owl too well...
Hey, I remember you from your GNXP days and also when you were on MPC. I remember people there would link your blog years after you stopped posting. I hadn't seen anything from you in awhile myself and decided to look you up again.
ReplyDeleteI noticed going back a few years you became really obsessed with Vtubers and seem fond of writing song parodies about them. Comments sections with hundreds of comments, almost all of them by you, frequently veering into completely unrelated things, but usually about Vtubers. There's many comments where you'll talk as if you're speaking to the girls themselves.
This is all pretty weird to me because I remember you used to disdain things like this and never expressed the slightest interest in anime before. Did you suffer some kind of late-onset schizophrenia or something?
I still haven't watched anime, aside from catching up on the Ghibli movies. And almost none of the Hololive EN content is anime-related -- only their anime-girl avatars, and of course some of their pop culture references. But their content requires minimal / no knowledge of anime.
ReplyDeleteSome of the Hololive girls lurk here, just like some podcasters do. If you write about media / entertainment figures, some of them will pay attention to what you have to say.
Anna K. linked my blog on her Twitter account awhile ago, frequently refers to topics that only I have covered lately. I'm not trapped in the fake & gay discourse cycles on Twitter, so this is one outlet that she and other media people have for refreshing topics.
Nassim Taleb on Twitter linked to my blogpost about his coming around to Trump, back in 2015 / 16.
Gura, Fauna, and Mumei did / still do lurk here -- others I'm unsure about. Gura took my request for "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction during her birthday karaoke last year, despite no one in chat requesting it (I put up a comment here beforehand). And worked in my suggestion for a cursed commercial / informercial into her Big Brain Academy gameshow, also last year. (There was no such content in the original stream, which had tech problems and got canned, but the re-scheduled one, after I made the suggestion, did have the parody commercial.)
You can find comments by Fauna saying that the EN server in Minecraft is like a caveman world, and the JP server is civilization -- based on a post I made at the time, spring/summer of '22. She took some helpful hints I made on making the world tree this spring (building a skeleton, then fleshing it out, rather than filling in everything all at once, as she had been). They'd been putting off visiting Sana's tower for awhile, and I made the suggestion that they do so, after the disastrous Pico Park stream where everyone's nerves got nuked. And they did!
Mumei doesn't take requests or suggestions, but she does refer to things I bring up from time to time. During their Propnight collab, they were giggling about boy bands being in again (a topic I'd just posted about), and Mumei added for emphasis "in a cycle," a term only I use in connection with boy bands or pop culture.
I pointed out earlier how Pippa did a Ouija board stream with a hand-cam the day after I suggested the Hololive girls do so while bunking with each other in Japan -- and it was December, not October when such a stream may be seasonal.
This is not to brag, just to establish that media / entertainment people do read what others say about them and pay attention, reacting to it if it resonates with them. And in some high-profile cases I literally have the html links from their social media to show that -- not that I care about proof, but unaware readers like you might.
I'm hardly unique in this -- most or all of the vtubers lurk on 4chan, the Hololive reddit, Twitter, etc. If they see someone interesting -- a fan-artist, a jokester, whoever -- they take notice.
I'm hardly unique in this -- most or all of the vtubers lurk on 4chan, the Hololive reddit, Twitter, etc. If they see someone interesting -- a fan-artist, a jokester, whoever -- they take notice.
ReplyDeleteThey're not Hollywood celebs with multiple layers of removal from their audience. They literally interact with the accounts in their chat during their streams. (I never log in and chat, though, just post things here on the blog.)
If you're old enough to remember GNXP, you may be a literal or spiritual Boomer who doesn't understand what online entertainment has evolved into by now. There are no global celebs with massive audiences spanning all demographics, who the audience could never hope to reach, let alone get a reaction from. It's much more niche and fragmented, where even the top figures in the format interact with the audience live, back-and-forth / conversationally, and follow along with what their audience is saying off-stream.
Other people get their fan-art retweeted, others get their lingo used. I get some of my ideas used, or topics referred to. That's all I care about, not getting credit or clout or anything fake & gay like that. And mostly I'm posting for general observations, timeless readers from the distant future, etc., not to get reactions here-and-now.
And in the face-streamer world, I wrote a tribute song to Pokimane to the tune of "Cheerleader" by OMI, and within a day or so, she stopped whatever she was doing in the middle of a livestream, and brought up the music video of it, playing it in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteSpring/summer of '22, but Twitch vods don't get archived, though there may be a re-upload on YouTube or some fan archive somewhere. I think during her live-streaming the Johnny Depp / Amber Heard trial.
That was a pretty forgotten song by 2022 (although appreciated by her audience when she played it), and she brought it up seemingly out of nowhere, and not even in a music-related stream. But if you knew I'd written a tribute song to the tune of it a few days earlier, it would make total sense. ^_^
I don't care about credit or clout, just some kind of winking acknowledgement like that is fine enough -- and the effect it had on her audience, too, who got to relive a cherished song from their high school days.
I haven't tuned in so much to her streams after she began playing mostly Valorant (I don't care for shooters, no matter who plays them, including my beloved Hololive girls). But I still have fond memories of that fleeting interaction. :)
Again, I think your misunderstanding is just due to being a Boomer who doesn't follow these newer formats, where the audience is smaller than it was for Hollywood celebs or must-see network TV shows back in the '90s, and where the content is heavily geared to interacting in real time with the audience.
It's not like the late 2000s, when some guy would capture footage of himself playing a Nintendo game, upload it to YouTube in a series of videos, and so where the audience was not interacting in real time. And where the uploader probably only read a handful of comments but did not respond to them in the next video he uploaded.
I was late to these formats myself, only during the Among Us craze of fall-winter 2020. Before that, I'd seen some highlight-reel videos from Pokimane's streams, but that was it for livestreams. I'd only ever watched previously recorded let's plays way back in the late 2000s (thegaminggoose, on YT, if anyone's interested, although he's deleted / privated a lot of them by now).
You can literally pay a livestreamer $100, and they'll read your name, your message, and react to it on stream (assuming it isn't demeaning, etc.). Lesser amounts, they might read your name and thank you, just not read the message out loud or react to it.
ReplyDeleteThat's how interactive and close the distance is between the streamer and the audience. It's not the '90s, when you could never hope to get your fan letter read by a celeb, let alone publicly acknowledged by them.
Times have changed.
I never send superchats, though, feels too unearned. I'd rather make an impression by the substance or style of what I have to say, not purchasing awareness as though it were entering a cheat code.
And it also reflects better on the streamer when that's the way -- she's the type of person who resonates with another person's substance or style, not just addressing them in order to digitally panhandle.
I'm fine with the practice of donating to a streamer, in order to support them financially and keep their content free for the entire audience -- rather than paywalling everything, making it too transactional and quid pro quo. That's community-destroying.
And if they get some acknowledgement, as patrons usually do, that's fine too.
That's just not the role I and others like me play in the community.
Anyway, that's the recap on the state of online media / entertainment, for people who are out of the loop and primarily read here for all the other non-streamer topics I cover.
ReplyDeleteI don't respond to weak attempts at trolling, but I do know that lots of readers don't follow online entertainment and media, and this presents a nice opportunity to summarize what it's like for the curious, without having to experience it yourself.
One last key point, online entertainment is not defined by a performative distance between the streamer and the audience. It's not like a singer, dancer, actor, etc., where there's a fourth wall that is not broken -- and any attempts to do so by the audience go unresponded to.
ReplyDeleteSome streamers do have traditional performer activities, like when the Hololive girls record a concert with singing and dancing and comedic bits in between. But that is secondary to their main content, which is live-streaming.
The streamer is less like a performer, and more like a party host -- one who's at the center of attention, whose activities provide a focal point for the other attendees, and whose location is the place where the guests pile into. The watchers are less like a passive audience, and more like party guests.
Sometimes the party is more party-like, sometimes it's more of a chill hang-out session. But a livestream is fundamentally a social gathering -- not a performing art -- with entertainment to liven up the mood, rather than a purely mundane "hey howzit going, how bout that weather" etc. kind of tone.
It's more like when Victorian young women would host a party, play the piano, bring up topics for conversation, get dressed up in a special way, in order to entertain the guests and make the party a success. This brings culture into the fundamentally social activity, without it going as far as a "performer / audience" activity like stage-acting, concerts, and so on.
Whether the streamer considers the watchers as friends, acquaintances, fellow members of a cultural scene, or whatever -- she is a party hostess, and they are party guests, not a performer and an audience. They mingle with each other, not separated by the stage / seating area.
So for Boomers who haven't been to one of these parties, they might think it unbelievable that a performer would be aware of or acknowledge someone an audience member. But streams are not part of the performing arts. It's not so unbelievable when you understand that it's more like a party hostess being aware of and acknowledging some of the guests at her party. What good hostess would not?!
So I'm not achieving a superhuman feat by having podcasters or streamers lurk here -- I'm just a memorable party guest, the kind that the hostess wants to keep tabs on outside of the parties themselves. ^_^
Once upon a time, streamers may have been pure entertainers with a performative distance -- like if some guys kicks ass at Tetris or Street Fighter, and the whole point of his streams are "watch me kick ass at Tetris or Street Fighter".
ReplyDeleteHe's not a party host putting on some light entertainment to liven up the mood for his guests -- he has some elite-level skill that he's showing off, and the passive audience is there to gawk at his awesome skills. Much like attending a virtuoso's concert.
Or maybe he plays a crappy game and rages at it for comedic effect, and the passive audience sits there and yuks it up at his performance.
I don't know that streamers ever *were* like this, only that they could have been 5-10 years ago. I still think that back then, they probably would've recorded themselves and uploaded a video to YouTube, rather than livestream it.
But in any case, those days are long gone. Streaming as of the 2020s is not a performance, it's a social gathering with light entertainment provided by the host, who mingles with the guests, and who mingle amongst themselves.
Has Japan ever taken part in the cult of ugliness? Largely not, but as I look over the recent past, there was a brief window where they absolutely did -- the late '90s and early 2000s.
ReplyDeleteThis was the heyday of so-called J-horror, which does not refer to the horror genre in Japan over time, but mostly within this time period.
Movies like the Ring, the Grudge, Dark Water, all of which were re-made in America in the 2000s. And even more dark, gritty, gruesome ones that never were re-made here, like Audition.
As I detailed above, Spirited Away is probably the most off-putting and uncomfortable Studio Ghibli movie, relying more on disgust and spoiling purity than on fear and danger.
Zombie-related video games like Resident Evil -- really beginning with the 2nd one, where the setting is not a refined Gothic mansion, but gritty and ugly urban wastelands.
Ditto for the second Clock Tower game (known here as Clock Tower, since the first one was JP-only -- and that one was not gritty or ugly, but set in a Dario Argento-esque mansion). The whole survival horror genre was pretty gritty and ugly, not sublimely striking or Gothic (and certainly not kawaii).
Everyone noticed at the time how dark and disturbing Majora's Mask was compared to Ocarina of Time. But after watching Fuwamoco playing Ocarina of Time, I was reminded that the motif of ugly creepy molesting zombie mobs was injected into the Zelda world as well at that time -- the ReDead and Dead Hand enemies.
Zelda has always been about Medieval fantasy, ancient mythology, etc., so the zombies were a unique departure for the series, and they're only memorable in those two games from '98 and 2000. That's how strong the J-horror phenomenon was -- it made its way into Zelda, of all places.
I don't know about non-narrative media like music, but I'm guessing it was darker, sadder, and grittier than the '80s or the 2000s and 2010s.
One of the few current exceptions of Japanese video games that appeal to the Western cult of ugliness, are those by Chilla's Art. And not surprisingly, they are consciously reviving the look-and-feel of the J-horror heyday during the late '90s and early 2000s.
ReplyDeleteJapanese streamers who otherwise play sublime or kawaii games, also play these Chilla's Art games on occasion. And so, Japanese audiences watch them on occasion as well.
But they are way more popular among Western streamers and audiences, where the cult of ugliness is more deeply rooted by now. And in the 2010s and '20s, they have the extra layer of ugliness by purposefully using crappy early 3D graphics instead of more advanced 3D graphics, or the highly detailed 2D graphics of the late '90s and early 2000s.
Primitive 3D graphics in 1996 could be tolerated as the first necessary step in a new technology, not a deliberate aesthetic choice. (I never granted even that, and believed they should have never moved away from 2D and its amazing graphics of the time.) But by now, it's a deliberate blue-balling of the audience -- choosing to serve up something with a crappy style, and expecting them to slurp it up and ask for seconds.
But then, if you're a member of the cult of ugliness, you probably will -- and that's why so many games get made by them, and streamed to huge audiences who don't watch any other kind of Japanese video games and are mainly interested in ugly Western ones.
Also, Silent Hill games are probably part of the cult of ugliness. After the Konami team which did the games left the company, nobody has been able to make a good sequel again. Probably the interest has fade because nobody is interested massively in ugliness right now? I don't know. Street Fighter games have become ultra-ugly and grotesque too, when they used to be a blast to play and watch. The Darkstalkers games by Capcom from the 90s had monsters and freaks to play with, but the games where still colorful and had really funny animations and designs.
ReplyDeleteBtw, what the hell is happening with architecture all around the world? The ugliness of pretty much all architecture since the 90s is becoming almost unbearable. Has something like this happened anytime in the past? Even falling empires from the past still did beautiful constructions, or tried it. Nowadays it's like they want us to become sick or anything.
And getting back to music's role in the cult of ugliness, the first Clock Tower game ('95, JP only) used sublime music instead of no music at all, or ugly / repulsive music and sound effects.
ReplyDeleteA mix of Baroque (by way of Goblin, who did scores for Argento), John Carpenter's own scores, and a bit of the first Nightmare on Elm Street score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH_2wl8Oq44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnq4jZjm7Dk
In the game, there's a dramatic sting before the chase music of the first clip above. Much more jarring in the game.
There isn't much of a melody, like Super Mario Bros or Zelda, it's more atmospheric and soundscape-y. But it does have repeated motifs and basic chord progressions, along with multiple layers / sources of sound effects. All adding to the sense of danger and tension and urgency to GTFO before Scissorman catches up with you.
But it also helps create a sense of place, it being both an antiquated Gothic mansion but being experienced in the digital synthesizer present day. Just as the location strangely spans both the antique and the modern, so does the music. Nothing more eerie than things that span seemingly contradictory categories.
The gameplay of the first Clock Tower is actually more like the "hide and seek" simulators of 10-15 years later, not the survival horror blockbusters like Resident Evil, where you had weapons and went on the offense. And yet it does not look or sound bland and ugly like the Western / Outlast style of hide-and-seek sims that came long after it.
It was consciously trying to capture the style of an old Argento movie, in video game form, so it wasn't as much a part of the J-horror tropes of its time.
As the Roman Empire began collapsing in the 3rd C., there was no more great architecture coming from them. Most of their fame owes to the 1st C. AD, and somewhat into the 2nd.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just a matter of funding and coordinating the economic side of things, like building an aqueduct. Roman literature bit the dust at the same time, and peaked at the same time -- no massive amount of materials needed, no extravagant funding, no legions of slave labor to put it together.
The collective spirit of the people starts dying out, and there goes their whole cultural production process. This is also what unravels the political and military domains of their society.
As I've explained before, it's not merely a "return to normal" from great heights -- it's an excitable system, like a neuron firing, eating a meal, orgasming, etc. Once you get worked up into an excited state, from a neutral resting state, you then crash down way below the neutral level, into a refractory state where further excitation is not even possible. It takes awhile to recover back to normal.
We are currently undergoing the "crashing from great heights" phase of this cycle, and nothing great and new will come from our culture in a very long time.
If there were another empire on the rise, we could join its sphere of influence and leech a little of their cohesion and cultural dynamism -- much like Europe did after their empires collapsed in WWI / WWII, by joining the American sphere (not only politically / militarily, but culturally as well).
But we are entering one of those rare periods in world history where there are no rising empires anywhere. So we will be left to drift off -- hopefully not into total oblivion, where our past production is no longer being preserved and passed along. But you never know.